When you operate a business online or a brick and mortar business, you connect with your customers and clients. The larger you get, the larger your business, less happens on a personal level and the more you need assistance to do that. More and more people are looking to buy from people they know, like and trust. Therefore, they are expecting people to respond to their questions, to interact with them on different social media sites.  You really can bring down barriers between business and personal with social media.

When you take a look at a local example, here in British Columbia we have only one company that provides our car insurance and it’s called ICBC. They have a Twitter account, and there is one person within ICBC who monitors, watches, answers and takes advantage of the personal to business by using Twitter. It’s very effective. They can help people very quickly, they can provide answers, it’s a very effective tool.

1) Social media is one of the best ways for you to engage with your customer and clients without having to be right there in front of them or on the telephone. You can take a look at what they’re posting on their personal profiles on the different platforms and you can interact with them. You can watch for people commenting and asking questions about your product or service.

2) You can provide great information through social media. You can let people know when there’s something special happening, give advance notice that’s something is new and different, change is going to happen, you just found this great source of information from somewhere else and you can share that with your clients and customers. It’s great to be able to share not only your information, but information, products and services you believe your customers will be able to use to enhance what you provide for them.

3) Connect with specific people and you can personalize it. When you go into someone’s Facebook page, you can tell the different kinds of things they like to do. Do they go to the movies? Do they listen to music? Are they pet owners? In my personal profile, I have a cover that I just had created and it has a picture of both of my dogs. You can find out what people are interested in and then use that information to be able to support them, to help them, to provide information that might be of  interest to them.

4) Provide access to more products and services that are recommended by friends. How many times have you purchased something or gone somewhere, gone to a restaurant because a friend recommended it? With social media, when you have your friends on Facebook connections on LinkedIn, followers on Twitter, and they recommend your products and services, they’re telling all of their friends you’re one of the good guys, you provide value.

Social media really does bring down those barriers. It’s really easy to go in and find different information about your customers and clients or finding what groups they belong to and interacting with them in those specific groups. Use social media to breakdown those barriers between business and personal because it really is about connections and helping people.